1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention relate generally to presence management and more particularly to intelligent presence management in a communication routing system.
2. Description of Related Art
Often time, an availability of a user to receive a phone call is important during business hours. This may be especially important in a call center or customer service department where calls need to be queued up for a next available agent (i.e., user).
Conventionally, the user may forward their calls when they expect to be away from their desk phone. For example, the user may forward calls to their mobile phone. However, the process for forwarding calls is manual. That is, the user must know in advance that they will be away from their desk phone, and must spend time configuring their desk phone to perform the forwarding function.
Alternatively, if the user is not available to answer their desk phone, the call may be forwarded to an answering service or answering device. In these cases, the answering service or answering device will take a message for the user, which the user may retrieve at a later time. However, some instances of these call forwarding mechanisms may require the user to manually indicate that the calls should be forwarded to the answering service or answering device. Other instances require the desk phone be contacted first and after no answer, the call is forwarded to the answering service or device.
As a result of the above mention problems, there is a need for a system that can intelligently direct communications in an automated manner.